Ra Ra Riot

“Dying is Fine“
from the album The Rhumb Line
2008
iTunes

Last summer, not long after Ra Ra Riot released a promising EP, their drummer John Ryan Pike drowned drowned in the ocean after a show in Massachusetts. His death weighs heavily on their excellent full-length debut, much of which he co-wrote. Taking its name from a bar close to Pike’s home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, The Rhumb Line abounds with death and water imagery, vividly evoking loss in a seaside town. But if the music is funereal, it’s also triumphant: Ra Ra Riot combine Arcade Fire‘s orchestral reveries with Vampire Weekend‘s pop sensibility for an album that’s both effervescent and heartbreaking.

“Ghost Under Rocks” starts as a mournful cello reverie, then boils over into a punchy industrial groove with stuttering drums. “St. Peter’s Day Festival” banks on jumpy dub rhythms as Wesley Miles sings, “If I go to Gloucester, I will wait there for you.” “Can You Tell” folds organs and explosive strings into a Sixties girl-group beat. (Vampire Weekend keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij co-wrote an earlier version of the song.) Even the macabre “Dying is Fine” sounds optimistic when Miles coos a few lines from an E.E. Cummings poem over a power-pop melody: “Dying is fine/ But maybe I wouldn’t like death … even if death were good.”

Part of what makes The Rhumb Line so engaging is that it’s ultimately life-affirming: It’s not only a requiem for a lost friend, it’s a tribute to the ones who stuck around through the worst times. As Miles sings on “Oh, La,” “We’ve got a lot to learn from each other/ We’ve got to stick together.” By the album’s end, he’s declaring, “I’ve discovered all I’ve got to do” — a simple but compelling reason for moving on.